George Maxwell (Australian politician)

George Arnot Maxwell (30 April 1859 – 25 June 1935) was a barrister and Australian politician.

Early life

Maxwell was born in Montrose, Forfarshire, Scotland and educated in Fife. He migrated to Australia with his family in 1875. He worked briefly as a jackaroo and then completed his matriculation in Melbourne in 1881.^[1]

He subsequently taught at Melbourne schools, including Caulfield Grammar School, while studying arts and law at the University of Melbourne, where from 1884 he was a student of Trinity College. His early training and experiences for his later career as a barrister and politician can be seen in his student activities. In July 1884, he was, along with Trinity student Ernest Selwyn Hughes, a founder of the Shakspeare [sic] Society at the University of Melbourne,^[2] and he won the Sir Wigram Allen Prize for Oratory awarded by the Trinity College Dialectic Society in December the same year.^[3] In 1889, Maxwell was appointed Prelector of the College's debating society:

The most prominent of the events of the Academic Year has always been the annual mooting of the Trinity College Dialectic Society. The meeting this year will be held on next Wednesday evening, August 14, in the Atheneum Hall, Collins-street. The chair will be taken at 8 o'clock by his Excellency the Acting-Governor, Sir William Robinson, K.C.M.G., the patron of the society, and the annual address will be delivered by the Prelector, Mr. G.A. Maxwell. Mr. Maxwell's subject is "Some Thoughts about Ourselves," and he will endeavor to prove that Australia is especially suited for the development and realisation of the democratic ideal. The history of the colony in the past will be touched upon, and the more striking aspects will be examined with a view to establishing the Prelector's propositions.^[4]

He was admitted to the Bar in 1891 and became successful at criminal law and was appointed King's Counsel in 1926.

Political career

Maxwell ran unsuccessfully for various Victorian Legislative Assembly seats: Collingwood in 1891; Prahran in 1897; Warrnambool in 1900; Carlton in 1902 and Evelyn in 1914. However, he won the Labor-held Australian House of Representatives seat of Fawkner for the Nationalists at the 1917 election. In parliament, he disliked what he saw as the sectionalism of the Country and Labor parties and, following his conscience, he voted against the Bruce-Page government on a number of issues in 1929. He was one of six Nationalists, including Billy Hughes, who brought the government down by voting against the maritime industries bill and as a result was unopposed by Labor at the 1929 election. He joined Hughes's Australian Party, but resigned in May 1930 and sat as an Independent until he joined the United Australia Party in 1931.

Personal life

Maxwell married Jean Russell Ross in 1896—they had four daughters and one son. Maxwell lost sight in one eye in 1920 and most of the sight in the other in 1921, becoming totally blind in 1929. Following his death at home in the Melbourne suburb of Canterbury, his seat of Fawkner was won by future Prime Minister Harold Holt.^[5]

Notes